Interesting canine facts that may help when foxing

[Tank]

Hi all, i'm not a long range varminter,(yet ), but i work a dog for a living so i thought i'd share some information about them and their senses which may help when you're out foxing.

 

1. The human nose contains a gland called the olfactory gland. For us, it contains in the region of 4 million olfactory cells. The olfactory gland and the size of it governs your ability to smell. A canines nose can contain anywhere between 200 and 240 million such cells, making it a far stronger sense than ours. If you get chance get a copy of the late Glenn R Johnsons 'Tracking dog, theory and methods', it shows how truly awesome their sense of smell is.

 

2. We humans shed 4 million-ish skin cells an hour. Just think, you're lying up for a fox, that's alot of scent blowing around. If you imagine your scent looks like smoke, (bear with me), it will pool in areas. In the urban environment it will pool against building lines, walls, fences, hedges etc. In rural areas it will pool anywhere that the wind can't blow it about.

 

Like i say, i'm not an expert varminter, just thought i'd share some of my knowledge of dogs with you in the vain hope it might help with taking care of charlie. Hope you have a good one,

 

Willy

[garyw]

willy-thats intresting about how many cells we shed :wacko

as for the fox sniffing us out "the fox lives on the wind" is a well known fact.the wind is our enemy when out calling/lamping but can be used to try and even up the odds.any good foxer will use the wind when calling to try and get the quarry upwind of us but thats not always possible depending on where the fox appears .if upwind and they are not convinced of the call they will come round to get down wind of the call.the trigger for the fox to exit is one of the 3 senses a fox uses for its survival--smell-sight- sound.even if spotted by a fox if you dont move you can call them right up to you if your backgrounded a fox doesnt have a true macular ie the ability to decipher the sight of a human in amongst its sight picture, unless we move then we trigger the sight reaction.once they get the smell of human in there nostrils usually from being cubs and the vixen lets them know that human scent smell is danger then thats the odds in the foxes favour.

hope this helps with your understanding of animal behaviour,

[Tank]

Thanks for that mate. I found it strange the other night when i called a fox that was down wind of me. It came running in to my call. I can only assume that it's a town fox and is used to human scent. Either that or it was just totally thick!!(which, as we all know foxes are not). The problem i find is that the wind chops and changes at a moments notice. But hey, that's what makes it such a challenge and such a prize when you get one of them!

[achosenman]

I’ve called so many foxes in that close to the vehicle that we have had to get them to stop so we could take the shot.

 

I know I’m nowhere near being any good at calling and neither do I have a Daniel Boon like ability when it comes to woodcraft.

 

When a mate and I have talked about it we reckoned it was because foxes are used to human scent and don’t automatically run off at the first whiff. If they did they wouldn’t stop running here in the south east.

 

As an example I was parked up on the farm at around 0:300 taking a tea break from lamping. The shooter and I were chatting about nothing in particular and I just felt I should give a quick sweep of the area. I flicked the lamp on and not and 20yds from us sat looking at us were two youngsters.

 

They didn’t make it past 40yds.

 

Like many hunters I never wash my hunting gear unless absolutely necessary. I’ve always wondered if that scent killer that our US cousins seem partial to works. Does anyone have any experience?

 

ATB

[Tank]

I definately notice the difference in their behaviour between two of my shoots. At one of them their out in the sticks and quite far from human contact. This really shows because when they see me they're gone!! At the other one they just look at you. I suppose with the proliferation of them in urban areas it means that they're not overly bothered by human scent. When i'm walking the dog round the block they often follow me! Fingers crossed for Sunday, my next bout of foxing

[achosenman]

I know what you mean.

 

To add insult to injury, the shoot next door has an idiot behind the rifle. Dealing with their lamp shy foxes takes twice as long as it needs to.

 

FWIW I seed the beat with fresh shot bunnies on the night I go out. That slows down even the wariest. A free meal gives them an incentive to pause long enough to get the shot away.

 

Good luck Sunday.

 

ATB

[garyw]

A fox will only be bothered by human scent if it has learned when a cub by the vixen usually or the dog fox barking a warning .if they [cubs] have picked up human scent then been barked at thats imprinted on them for life, if not they learn the hard way by themselves, the same when you lamp cubs they dont know what a lamp is until the vixen or dog warns them, this again is imprinted on them , inexperienced lampers attempting to shoot the cubs first usually educate them early in life. :angry:

[Tank]

A fox will only be bothered by human scent if it has learned when a cub by the vixen usually or the dog fox barking a warning .if they [cubs] have picked up human scent then been barked at thats imprinted on them for life, if not they learn the hard way by themselves, the same when you lamp cubs they dont know what a lamp is until the vixen or dog warns them, this again is imprinted on them , inexperienced lampers attempting to shoot the cubs first usually educate them early in life. :angry:

 

There's alot to be said for conditioning animals the wrong way, as in it's a pain in the harris when it's done to the detriment of what we're trying to do i.e. contolling the fox population.